Bernard Kock was an
opportunist and entrepreneur with a grand plan for colonizing Ile A'Vache
(Cow Island), Haïti with 5,000 American black slaves.
Two Presidents
with complimentary goals, Geffrard of Haïti and Lincoln of the
USA, helped Kock start his venture in 1863. But the critical factor of
reliable funding never materialized and
Kock was "left out to dry" by his investors with the 500 black émigrés suffering the consequences. Kock had
noble plans of building schools, churches and medical facilities and instituting profit
sharing for the slaves, none of which ever materialized.

The Haïtian government provided an inducement for the workers to eventually become Haïtian citizen farmers or landholders. These lofty goals also
never ever materialized.
Kock's currency, without backing, could only be used at his company stores, chits by current standards. Along with a new
partner, Surville Toussaint, Kock secured a
similar agreement for Cayemite Island but smallpox on A'Vache took its toll and killed 25 workers.
Ile
A'Vache folded in December 1863 when Kock's financial partners
abandoned their interest. Visiting his island for the last time on 20 December 1863
Kock found the workers demoralized and "many of them had gone actually mad,
under the influence of some religious excitement, to which they had
surrendered themselves", perhaps a veiled reference to Voodoo. On 22 December 1863 President
Lincoln sent a ship to bring the remaining
slaves back to the US abandoning any future colonization plans.
The complete article on Bernard Kock is currently under revision.

STATEMENT OF FACTS in
relation to theSettlement
on the Island of A'Vache NEAR
HAYTI, W.I. of
a colony under BERNARD
KOCK
with Documentary Evidence
and Affidavits, NEW
YORK WM. C. BRYANT & CO.,
PRINTERS 41 NASSAU ST. COR LIBERTY 1864

4.

Guide to Hayti, James Redpath,
Originally published in 1861 by Haytian
Bureau of Migration,
Reprint 1970, Negro University Press, page 18